Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 2.djvu/78

 of origination and passing away; the alternation of the annulling and absorption of the particular Powers in the unity, and of procession out of unity. In the Religion of Being-within-itself this alternation was indeed brought to rest in so far as the particular differences fell back into the unity of nothingness, but this unity was empty and abstract, and the truth is, on the contrary, the unity which is concrete within itself and is totality, so that even that abstract unity, together with the element of difference, enters into the true unity in which the differences are posited as annulled, as ideal, negative, and non-self-subsisting, but at the same time as preserved.

The unfolding of the moments of the Idea, the self-differentiation of the thought of absolute Substance, was therefore hitherto defective, in so far as the forms or shapes lost themselves on the one hand in hard fixity, while on the other it was merely by flight that unity was reached, or to put it otherwise, the unity was merely the disappearance of the differences. Now, however, the reflection of manifoldness into itself appears, implying that Thought itself contains determination within itself, so that it is self-determination, and determination has only worth and substantive content in so far as it is reflected into this unity. Together with this, the notion of freedom, objectivity, is posited, and the divine Notion thus becomes the unity of the finite and infinite. The Thought which only exists within itself, pure Substance, is the Infinite, and the finite, in accordance with the thought-determination, is the many gods; while the unity is negative unity, abstraction, which submerges the Many in this One. But this last has gained nothing by this; it is undetermined as before, and the finite is only affirmative outside of the Infinite, not within it, and hence so soon as it is affirmative it is finitude which is devoid of rationality. But now the finite, the determinate in general is taken up into infinitude, the form is commensurate with the substance, the infinite form is identical